Sophie Ashdown

For our second Tuesday session of the term, we were joined by Monika Gravagno who works for CSM in a role to embed Climate, Racial and Social Justice into the different courses at UAL.

She explained the five key principles:

And showed us a glossary of key terms:

We did a group task to review some of the key terminology and think about the keywords for them:

We split into groups and reviewed then discussed these topics:

• Social justice
• Futures thinking
• Reflective practice
• Ecological thinking

Monika discussed how we can weave these definitions into our work.  Eg empathy, humour, understanding biases for social justice.

Jonathan discussed how our course relates to this topic, and shared this draft paragraph from a new revision of the description of our course, which then further updates were suggested by the group:

It was an interesting session and not one that I would have expected.  I’d like to think that I’m conscious about climate, social, and racial justice on a daily basis, but it was good to give it more thought as to how it would related to our course and how we operate within it.

After the break we discussed plans for the interim show in March.  Our group will be there along with all of the other First year students across the four MA art courses at CSM.  The show runs from Thursday 13 to Sunday 16 March.  We will spend all day on Wednesday and most of Thursday setting up.

We’re using showing our work in separate space at the front of the building (marked in orange).  It has the advantage of being the first space that everyone will see when walking into the building, but the disadvantage of being without usable walls and having low lighting.

It is also a public space so we’ll need to be mindful of Health and Safety.  We were advised not to use blue tack, fishing wire, or clip frames.

It was really interesting and inspiring to talk about how we can set up the space to show our work effectively.  One idea is to use some lighting rigging and put it together in a unique formation from which we can hang or attach our work to.  There are also options to hang work from the ceiling, or have it behind glass in the elevator area.

We discussed the idea that all artwork has “behaviours” that can be affected by the form it takes (2D, 3D, moving, static, etc) and we’ll need to consider that for the show.  I had never thought about artwork having behaviour before but it makes sense.  I’ve had a think about what behaviour my pieces have, and I think it depends on the size and the medium, although almost all of my works are 2D.  My larger paintings on canvas have a deep edge so they’re marginally 3D but not really.  Regardless, I won’t be showing those in March since we are only showing pieces we have created since starting the course.  I will need to have a good think about what and how I want to show.

I’m excited for doing the interim show.  I’ve already invited quite a lot of people but I’m not sure how many will be there.  I’ll definitely have a few family there as my parents and sister are coming up from Dorset, plus my two teenage boys will be there. 

I’m not sure what the boys will think of the show but they’ve been to plenty of my exhibitions before.  They’ll likely just think there’s another peculiar thing that their weird mother is doing!  And they’d likely be right.